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Tue, 01 Jul 2008 @ 16:49 || Volvos and Countertops || AnnoyingSukki's car broke down this weekend. Shane and I were going to fill it up and pick some things up at the drug store and the dry cleaners. On the way, someone flagged us down and let us know the brake lights weren't working. I checked once we got to the dry cleaners and sure enough no brake lights. After getting home, I looked at the obvious things, bulbs and fuses, all seemed ok. I then looked online and saw there is a recall for 2002 Volvos for the brake lights and the write up seems to be exactly what was wrong with Sukki's car. The service center at the dealership is closed on the weekends, so I told Sukki she had no car, which didn't go over well, till I could take it in.On Monday I called the dealership and they set me an appointment for today. Sukki took the day off as she didn't want me to drive her to work. When I got home Monday night, the kitchen was torn apart. I'm pretty sure I didn't ask for my kitchen to be destroyed... Turns out, my brother-in-law, came over since Sukki was home and they refinished the countertops, using some sort of paint enamel that is supposta look like granite. Since the entire kitchen was taped and roped off, we went out to eat. Had the worse waitress ever at Chili's, more on that story after I've had time to elaborate it. Today I bring Sukki's car in. I mention that there was a recall on the year newer model that is exactly what was going on. The service guys get all defensive, and claim no such recall ever existed. No one was looking anything up, and I called them on it. One of the service guys claims he knows all the recalls and doesn't need to look it up. I'm a little pissed off that they are calling me a liar, so I go out to my van and get the recall number. When I bring it back, I get told this isn't an official recall and was asked what web site I pulled it off from. I couldn't remember, as I had only cut and pasted the recall info. They estimated it would be $125 to fix the lights and look at why the damn service light was on. Then he tells me the car is past due for it's 90,000 mile service, which is $680, and if it would be alright to do it now. I said no, but wanted to know what was covered in the service. He said "oil change and sparkplugs mainly". I asked him why the $680 bucks for oil and plugs? He said "well they check a lot of things". I told him no thanks. He mentioned as I was leaving the 105,000 mile service is $1000+ because they replace the timing belt, as if that would make me want to buy the $680 service. I went into my office for the morning, figured I'd give the dealership time to call me before going up to work at my client in Boulder. They called around 10:00 and I picked up Sukki and went to go pick up her car. I turned out to be $150ish and he pushed the service on me again. I told him I'd rather do it myself than pay that much. I also called him out for calling me a liar eariler. I had printed out two different copies of the recall, one from Volvo's site and one from the NHTSA. I told him I realize my wife's car is a year older than what was covered in the recall, but I don't like being called a liar, and I threw the printouts on the counter. I got dead silence, then a bunch of apologies, then I was referred to as "Mr. Doyle" and "sir", which probably translates to "asshole" in dealership speak, but I was happy I wasn't being treated like an idiot anymore. When I got home, the fumes were pretty strong, as Sukki's brother had been over and sprayed some sealer on the countertops. I think they're going to come out pretty good. Hopefully it's a inexpensive alternative to replacing them, which they needed. I'll post pics if they come out well. We never did get the gas... link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Mon, 30 Jun 2008 @ 18:22 || Missing saw || AnnoyingThis Sunday, after watching "Get Smart", (good movie). I was all set to build a new bed frame, Shane broke my old one. I went down into my basement where I have all my tools, and a bunch of 2x4s that used to be the walls. I can't reuse them to rebuild the basement, as code states I need pressure treated wood. I figured I'd slap together a couple 2x4 frames to hold up the box springs at the correct height.I get down to the basement, and right where my radial arm saw should be... nothing... Hmmm... After a bunch of yelling, I find out my brother-in-law borrowed it last week and had yet to bring it back. I was more annoyed that I didn't know it was being borrowed than I was that he borrowed it. I could have used a hand saw, my table saw or my circular saw, but I wanted to do this on my radial arm saw. So I put off this project and focused on how I can get my saw back. Apparently, I upset everyone, I was trying to find out if I could get it back any time soon, I guess I raised my voice during the interrogation. I got the saw back around 7pm and quickly put the frame together. I purposely made it 2" taller than the previous frame, so now Sukki needs a ladder to get into bed. Teach her to lend out my stuff! link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Tue, 24 Jun 2008 @ 14:05 || Recycling || AnnoyingI'm working up in Boulder this week, and as is the case they are all big on recycling, and energy conservation.It's pretty damn annoying. There's plenty of evidence that recycling at this level is a waste of time and actually increases energy use. Case one, Case two. Use google to find many more arguments. What I find funny, is at my current client, they just replaced all the manual soap and paper dispensers with electric ones. I'm sure individually a soap dispenser doesn't use a whole lot of wattage, but it uses some, and the manual soap dispensers were using zero. Add up all the soap dispenses and the power they consume may be a few dollars a month. Now take into account the energy and resources it took to manufacture these things, ship them to the US and have them installed. The old soap dispensers will now probably go into a scrap yard or maybe even a landfill. The paper towel dispensers are worse, they spit out paper every time someone walks by them, often wasting paper. The units are only a few weeks old, and already one is broken. The old paper towel dispensers were a simple metal box with a slot in the bottom, no moving parts, nothing to break. So way to go Boulderites, you are saving the world one soda can at a time, but wasting our energy with your fancy automatic soap dispensers. link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment Thu, 19 Jun 2008 @ 06:42 || 2:00am || AnnoyingA party started up in the room next to me this morning at 2:00am. Sounded like 4-5 people yelling, laughing and slamming doors. From the accents and how much they commented on the cow town that is Topeka, I'm guessing they are from the northeast, maybe New York.I was nice and waited for 30 minutes figuring they'd calm down. One of them yells "Want a Twilight Zone?!" then opens the door between the two rooms, or tried to, luckily theres two doors and mine was locked. At this point I get up, and bang soundly on the door. Complete quite..... Then I say very loudly. "Lets keep in down in there". A very quiet female voice says "yes, sir.." That lasted for about 15 minutes, they never got as loud as they were, but they kept me up till about 4:00am. The walls are pretty thin. When I woke up at 5:30 this morning, I avoided the urge to crank up my TV and stomp around while getting ready. link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Thu, 15 May 2008 @ 16:50 || Noise || AnnoyingI woke up last night around 1am, to a suspicious and annoying noise. It was storming pretty bad outside, heavy rain and winds, but this noise was louder. I laid in bed for a long time, trying to ignore it. No luck, couldn't sleep, had to investigate.I walked over to the bathroom as it sounded a lot like a very slow and very loud dripping faucet. It was a little louder in the bathroom, but clearly it wasn't coming from there. I walked out into the hall, but it was quieter. I walked down stairs, but it was muffled down there, could clearly still hear it tho. I went back up the stairs and found a spot outside the kids rooms where it was loudest, but couldn't figure out what it was. Was going to go in to Shane's room, but figured he'd wake up and start screaming, as I didn't get dressed for my investigation. I also need to remember to have the kids close the shades in the dinning room. The sound had a metallic ring to it, like water drops falling from a great height onto a metal beam. I went back to bed, the noise kept going, every 5-10 seconds, I fell asleep eventually. In the morning the sound was gone, but so was the wind and the rain. I wonder if I need to go check out my roof. link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment Sun, 11 May 2008 @ 11:44 || Birds || AnnoyingIt's the time of year in CO, where it's not hot enough to turn on the AC, but it's warm enough to sleep with the windows open.I have this large tree next to the master bedroom window, each morning I get woke up by the loudest birds around 4:00am. I've never heard of birds chirping, more like screaming, that early. I'm about ready to cut the tree down. Not sure if that will get rid of the birds as they are so damn loud that even if they moved to the tree in the neighbors yard they will probably still wake me up. I'm not sure what type of birds they are yet, haven't done any research, they seem to be the only ones squawking so early, the other birds don't join in till the sun rises. I'd like to just kill them and be rid of them, but there's probably some law against that. Not sure a plastic owl in the tree will do the trick or a stuffed cat. Was thinking maybe motion detecting lights, but that will probably bother me more than the squawking and would turn on too often due to the wind. Keeping the windows closed solves the problem, but it means turning on the AC and wasting money. link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment Fri, 18 Apr 2008 @ 21:53 || Medical Stuff || AnnoyingToday I had a doctors appointment that didn't really give me good news. I took today off as I didn't really take yesterday off and I had the doctors appointment awkwardly scheduled in the middle of the morning on the other side of Denver.I saw a ears, nose and throat specialist and he pretty much recommended a replacement of my nose, removal of my tonsils and removal of excess tissue in my sinuses and my throat, really gross stuff. I have always had shortness of breath, but written it off to being serious out of shape. They said my breathing contributed to my past weight problems, and is part of the reason I'm now having problems trying to get control of my weight, so my regular doctor wants me to take care of it. A few weeks ago they had me do a home sleep test, and I apparently failed, my overnight oxygen levels were too low, so now both the specialist and my family doctor want me to go into a sleep clinic to do an overnight test. I really don't want to do this, I don't have problems sleeping, I sleep like a log, and very rarely wake up, maybe it's because I'm half dead? I've been told that at times it looks like I stop breathing in my sleep and then gasp for air and start breathing again, but I doubted the stories. I was hoping the specialist would let me skip the sleep test after he recommended the surgery, but he said it was a good idea and wants to wait till after the tests before he schedules me for the knife. I'm scared to think what the recovery time is going to be like for that kind of operation. I can't imagine it's pleasant or short. Theres a lot happening at work and I don't want to be out of action for any length of time in the foreseeable future. Not something I'm looking forward to. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Tue, 15 Apr 2008 @ 13:49 || Penny || AnnoyingThis weekend, Sukki, Shane and I were at the shoe store. Sukki was exchanging something, probably shoes. The new item rang up to a penny more than the return, so the clerk asked for a penny.I didn't have any change or cash and neither did Sukki. I offered to put the penny on my card but pointed out to the woman that the merchant account would probably charge the store about 30 cents, and it wasn't really worth charging me the penny. She still wanted that penny, so I made Shane run out to the truck and grab a penny off the floor, cause that's where I keep my pennies. link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment Thu, 03 Apr 2008 @ 17:07 || More Security || AnnoyingToday I saw that TSA is searching for the perfect laptop bag.I don't see how this helps. If the goal is to speed up the lines, it's not taking out your laptop that slows things down, it's the slow ass TSA people running the X-Ray machines or not enough X-Ray machines. Over the past 5 to 6 years I have flown on average 2-4 times a month. I have never been held up for at the X-Ray line because someone was too slow to take out their laptop. It's always been after the person has everything out on the conveyer belt that they are waiting for the TSA person to accept the bags in front of them going thru the X-Ray or the TSA person standing behind the metal detector that is holding up the line. I think I'd prefer to use my (old) backpack, (the new temporary one is still bugging me), and remove my laptop, than anything I would have to unfold or twist around (read the article) a new bag. Most laptop cases/backpacks are setup so the laptop slips out easily anyway. The solution isn't to waste money on a "laptop bag challenge" but to hire more (or better) TSA folks, and set up (or keep open) more lines. link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Tue, 01 Apr 2008 @ 20:45 || Security || AnnoyingI'm back on a roll of annoying posts. Should make Shane happy. :PDenver was one of the airports that rolled out the new theme based security lines. This sucks. I've gone thru this twice and each time it took longer than before the new lines. If they have different lines for the type of travelers, they should put the more experienced or faster TSA people on the Business or Frequent Traveler line. Both times thru, the Business Traveler line turned out to be the slowest. Not due to the travelers, but due to TSA. This last trip they had a questionably mentally retarded woman running the X-ray. It seemed for each bag she had to call over another TSA person to look at the monitor. I might have thought that they were being a little more through that night, but the other TSA agent waved almost every bag thru and was clearly annoyed himself. It got to be pretty obvious that 1, the woman was a moron, 2, she was still being trained or very new on the job and 3, she was very nervous. Any one of these reasons should have her pulled from the line. It's bad enough she was slow and holding up the line, but she was also incompetent, not the person I want in charge of my security, even if it's just security theater. The new themed lines might make sense if it were the travelers that held up the lines and not TSA. (Old people still hold up lines, they're still on my list). link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Mon, 31 Mar 2008 @ 17:46 || Security || AnnoyingIf you aren't that bright, maybe a job in the security industry is for you!I spent the morning running around trying to get badge access turned on for a special area at my clients site. Regardless of the fact that we sent in all the paperwork weeks ago, our client rep got all the right signatures and followed all the correct procedures, it still took over 5 hours to get access to that building. Actually, I still don't have access, security says I do, but when I swipe my badge and enter my code, the doors don't open, but a guard will wave me thru... FYI: the guard used to waved me thru before I did all the paperwork and run around to upgrade my badge. Here's an article about some stupidity of TSA, TSA vs Nipple Ring I really need to move up my relocation to Norway. link to story || 2 comments || Add a comment Mon, 10 Mar 2008 @ 21:56 || popping noise || AnnoyingIt happened when I was on an escalator with one of my clients. My left foot was not 100% on the same tread as my right foot and when the tread lifted up my left foot slipped down. My leg made a sick popping sound, and I got what felt like a bad leg cramp in my calf. I tried stretching it out to get rid of the cramp, and I think I made it worse. It's been about 4 hours and it still feels cramped up. Since then I've been limping around.Sitting in front of the laptop isn't helping, I'm going to take a bunch of advils and hope it's better in the morning. link to story || 5 comments || Add a comment Sat, 08 Mar 2008 @ 08:53 || Insurance Company || AnnoyingOn Thursday this week, I got a call from my doctor's office. My insurance has deigned the refill of one of my prescriptions. It was for my lipitor, my doctor recommends I stay with lipitor over experimenting with the generics. We had tried two of the generics a few years ago, and they didn't give the same results and one of them gave me some side effects.I planned on arguing this with my insurance company. The company's controller, who is in charge of employee benefits was on vacation the end of this week, so I was waiting for her to come back. However, Walgreens may have solved the problem. I got a call from them yesterday. Without asking them, they were trying to work with the insurance company and got them to agree to approve the lipitor if I double my dosage and cut my pills in 1/2. Cutting pills in 1/2 is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. I can't think of any cost savings by making me carry a pill cutter around. I can't wait to see what problems I have bringing it thru airport security... I can't imagine this saves the drug companies any money, or the insurance companies. All it really does is annoy me. If the insurance company actually saves money it has to be due to some weird marketing ploy by the drug companies, probably volume purchasing. The only good thing coming out of this is my co-pay drops in 1/2, as I get 2 months worth at once and only pay 1 co-pay vs a co-pay per month. But is the $15 bucks worth the hassle of cutting pills in 1/2? The whole things sticks of the insurance company making me do busy work, just like when the Army made me paint rocks. link to story || 4 comments || Add a comment Thu, 10 Jan 2008 @ 11:04 || Damn Teeth and HOA || AnnoyingAfter almost 10 years living in this HOA, I went to my first HOA meeting last night. Did I mention I hate the HOA?The meeting went ok, it was delayed 10 minutes till we had enough home owners show up to gain forum. It lasted almost an hour, and nothing important was discussed. It probably would have only lasted half that if this little old lady would have shut up. Her concern was not knowing if the replacement fence put up around the community was paid for or not. It has been, but she continued to complain she did know if it was or not, and this was very confusing to her. There were three open positions, and I told myself I would not volunteer. It was hard, I would love to get on the board mainly to get them to stop harassing people and to weaken the covenants. No one volunteered, so they will appoint a homeowner at the next meeting if no one steps up. The little old lady also wasted about 15 more minutes harping on other peoples houses, bitching about paint colors and how the kids are walking by her house before and after school. The dentist changed up my braces yesterday and they hurt, so I'm in a pissy mood. link to story || 4 comments || Add a comment Tue, 18 Dec 2007 @ 10:59 || 9News || AnnoyingI've been watching the news on channel 9 pretty much since I moved out here. Lately they have really been annoying me. They seem to only cover 1 or 2 real news stories a night and waste so much time on things which have no business being called news.The recent shootings in near by Arvada and Colorado Springs, every time there is some minor tie in 9News reports on it and does a complete recap of the story, wasting a good 10 minutes of the news. Last night they reported the preacher in one of the churches involved made a statement about being tested or some such nonsense. Then we had to get reactions from church goers, and another recap. I switched to the news on channel 4, it seemed better, till they did a piece on toy recalls or something about toys and got reactions on the street. Why do we care what some bozo on the street thinks about toys? Isn't it obvious this is just filler because TV is too cheap to have real reporters that dig up stories? It's not like it's hard to find real news, Sen Dodds is sitting on an important bill in the senate, whats the deal with that, sounds like a story. The writers strike is still going on. Damn it! without the Daily show, I don't know what evil Bush is up to! link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment Tue, 13 Nov 2007 @ 16:04 || Rotten Sandwiches || AnnoyingSo it's been 5 days since our big seminar, I had a lot of left over sandwiches. I figured I'd eat them over the next week. The one I had for lunch today isn't sitting with me very well. I only ate the meat, the bread was all stale and the lettuce was purple. The pickle was still good.I guess I need to throw them all out, I probbaly should have given them to a homeless shelter last week. Odd they didn't keep well in the fridge. link to story || 3 comments || Add a comment Tue, 06 Nov 2007 @ 09:10 || Not Switching Doctors || AnnoyingThat experiment failed. I went in for my 9am appointment with the new Doctor, only to find I didn't have an appointment.The receptionist franticly flipped thru her apointment book and couldn't find my appointment. I walked out, I was nice, but I'm not switching to a Doctor thats not on the ball. Not only did the office not open till 9am, they messed up my first appointment and they don't use computers, at least not for setting appointments.
link to story || 1 comment || Add a comment Fri, 02 Nov 2007 @ 17:24 || Switching Doctors || AnnoyingI've been unhappy with my current Doctor's office for a while. Not the Doctor's themselves, but with the nurses. I'm not sure what I've done, other than being my normal anti-social self, but I seemed to have really pissed them off.The last straw was with my meds. Walgreens had me on an automatic refill, but couldn't seem to get all my meds to refill at the same time. They claimed they were only doing what the Doctor's office was telling them. I called my Doctor's office to get to the bottom of it, of course I had to leave a message. When they called back, I'm was over at a clients office where my cell phone barely works. They call me 3 times in rapid succession, each time getting dropped before I could even say hello. When they did get though, the nurse was very argumentative, she even ended with "I don't know what you are talking about, go get your meds from Walgreens if thats what you want!". Well, it wasn't what I wanted, I just want to have each of my prescriptions to refill on the same schedule. Apparently I'm asking for the impossible. I've called around and will be going to a new doctor to see how they are. I'm not ready to have my records forwarded quite yet, not sure how modern the new folks are, as I was hanging up the receptionist blurts out they only accept check and cash... link to story || 4 comments || Add a comment Sat, 06 Oct 2007 @ 09:23 || Damn Koreans part XVII || AnnoyingBy popular demand, here's the latest in the damn Koreans story.My mother-in-law is turning 70 this year. The in-laws still in Korea picked Oct 26th as the big family reunion. They didn't pick the date till a week or so ago, however we were told it would be in late October about a month ago.. Annoying point 1: didn't have a fixed date to work with The original plans were for all of us to go, however, Sukki decided that it would be better if only 2 of us went, Sukki and Mindy. Shane and I don't mind, I wasn't looking forward to it anyway. Both of them needed their passports renewed. I took care of Mindy's a few months ago and she's all set. Sukki waited till last week, I pushed to do it the same time as Mindy's but she didn't want to. Annoying point 2: didn't start the passport process early enough When she finally did get organized to renew her passport. I got the instructions on what we needed to do, she's not a US citizen so we needed to renew her Korean passport. It was simple enough, however they wanted a pre-paid self addressed express mail envelope to send the passport back in. Of course Sukki wants to do this late Saturday afternoon when the post office has already closed. There is a new Kincos/FedEx store that just opened down the street from us, so we went there. I was hesitant, the instructions clearly said US Mail, but didn't say not to use FedEx or UPS. I wanted to wait till Monday, I figure the embassy had their rules and probably couldn't or weren't smart enough to understand and deviate from them, but Sukki was nervous she wouldn't get her passport back in time for the trip. We went into FedEx and did a prepaid return thing so all they had to do was call FedEx for a pickup. Annoying point 3: They never listen to me This Monday, I get a call from the Korean Consulate. I could barely understand her, but she was saying they don't have a FedEx account so can't process the passport till they get a pre-paid self addressed express mail envelope. I tried to explain they didn't need a FedEx account, but it didn't work. I had Sukki call in and explain to them they could use the FedEx envelope, it was already paid for. All she got were the instruction on how to get our money back from FedEx and how to send them a pre-paid self addressed express mail envelope. Annoying point 4: Stupid people Which leads us back to my Wednesday post about the Post Office. link to story || 0 comments || Add a comment Tue, 18 Sep 2007 @ 19:38 || Security Patrol || AnnoyingYesterday I was pulled over by a security patrol at my clients facility. The place is pretty big, they have a dozen or more buildings and have the entire place behind fences.I was driving between buildings and noticed I had a white pickup truck tailgating me. I thought, what a jerk..., but kept on driving. He started blowing his horn, I kept going, I was almost to the parking lot. As I pulled into the parking lot he blared his horn, at this time I see he has yellow lights flashing on the top of the truck. I stopped for him and he gets out and walks to my window, gets all pissy with me. Apparently I didn't stop at a stop sign somewhere between the two buildings. These arn't real roads, they may have been at one time, but they are no longer public roads. After he finished being all huffy, he shifts into friendly mode, and says he'll let me go with a verbal warning, and not write me up. This got me curious. I asked him what does writing me up mean? He explained that they would have me on record as breaking the driving rules and that a copy of the violation would be sent to my direct manager. Not that I would want to annoy a customer, but that was pretty laughable, why even pay for these rent a cops to police the internal roads/parking lots if thats the best they can do for some jerk who doesn't see a stop sign.
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